Contemporary Sermons Research Articles

Shaikh & Seedat: The Women’s Khutbah Book, Contemporary Sermons on Spirituality and Justice From Around the World

Shaikh & Seedat: The Women’s Khutbah Book, Contemporary Sermons on Spirituality and Justice From Around the World (Soodeh Mansouri)

(Re)writing orality: editing the preaching of the Compileison de Dis Commandemenz

Sermons are a type of text ideally suited for analyzing historical methods of writing orality as a rhetorical technique, illustrating the rhetorical techniques employed to invoke the spoken word on the written page and the responses that the impression of orality was intended to elicit from a sermon’s envisioned audiences. Artes praedicandi, guides to composing and performing sermons, flourished during the High Middle Ages; reading them alongside contemporary sermons allows us to explore how the advice that they gave was carried out in practice. By combining this theoretical approach with the study of the material text—looking at cues particular to the manuscripts in which these works were found, such as punctuation—we can consider how, why, and for whom these texts set out to construct themselves as oral, and perhaps learn something about the methods and intentions of writing (or, perhaps, ‘feigning’) orality in the process.

Religious Vitality in Victorian London by William M. Jacob (review)

Reviewed by: Religious Vitality in Victorian London by William M. Jacob Mary Heimann Religious Vitality in Victorian London. By William M. Jacob. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2021. Pp. viii, 348. £75,00. ISBN 978-0-19-289740-4.) Victorian London, like other great cities, has often been presented as a place where religion went to die. Contemporary sermons, pastoral letters, reports, newspaper articles and novels portrayed the capital sensationally, as a sink of immorality, heathenism, infidelity, religious indifference, the modern Babylon. Secularization and urbanization, popular theories of the 1960s which only began to be challenged by scholars in the 1980s, still exercise considerable hold over the popular imagination. In this densely packed survey of religious life in Victorian London, W. M. Jacob argues for the pervasiveness of religiosity—a term which goes well beyond formal church affiliation or attendance—at every level of society. Religious Vitality in Victorian London offers a useful service in bringing together two generations of scholarship on how the Church of England, together with a variety of Nonconformist and Dissenting traditions, fared in the Victorian religious marketplace. Like them, Jacob frames much of the discussion through the prism of social class and gender; the focus on London enables the study meaningfully to incorporate Judaism and Roman Catholicism into his analysis. Jacob's definition of "religion" follows trends in post-1990s scholarship in including nominal, tacit, or implicit faith. The monograph further builds on the work of others in bringing into "religiosity" what Jacob terms "quasi-religious" movements (including even ethical and humanist movements), and "parareligions" (including phrenologists, spiritualists, theosophists, and occultists). By bringing both supernaturalist and secularist organizations under the blanket term "religion," it could be argued that Religious Vitality in Victorian London expands the term "religion" so far as to invalidate comparisons with earlier works about the decline of religion, thereby weakening its revisionist claims. [End Page 417] Religious Vitality in Victorian London concludes that "in the context of the massive social disturbance of migration, urbanization and industrialization religion continued to be a vital core ingredient framing the nature of this great modern metropolis" (p. 308). While this statement might not come as news to specialists in Victorian religion, the message still needs to be heard by non-specialists and students, for whom W. M. Jacob offers a careful, detailed compendium and discussion of religious activity of all sorts which took place in London during the reign of Victoria. Mary Heimann Cardiff University Mary Heimann Cardiff University Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press

Funkcja ekspresywna we współczesnych tekstach homiletycznych

Preaching scripts, as a peculiar act of interpersonal communication, fulfils cognitive, impressive and prophetical functions. Additionally, they also fulfil an expressive function which reveals the sender’s attitude towards the contents and essence of the message. This allows the sender to manifest their feelings and experiences and express their psychological condition. Emotions play an extraordinarily important role in the process of verbal influence upon the audience. Therefore, the effectiveness of preaching speech depends greatly on emotions. This article is a trial to look at the linguistic means employed in contemporary sermons, thanks to which preachers achieve a high level of expression creating a specific emotional climate. The analysed scripts were drawn from sermons delivered in the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw and broadcast in the Polish Radio. The expressive function in the studied texts reveals itself mainly on lexical and syntactic grounds. Rhetorical figures also play an important part in achieving expressiveness of speech. The process of sermon communication achieves its human dimension thanks to emotional measures.

The legacy of the Danish ‘church fathers’ N.F.S. Grundtvig and S.A. Kierkegaard in 11,955 contemporary sermons

In this paper, we investigate representations of the two influential Danish nineteenth-century theologians N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783-1872) and S.A. Kierkegaard (1813–1855) in a text corpus of 11,955 modern-day sermons from the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark (ELCD). Through a word embedding analysis we map the semantic habitat of the two theologians individually and in relation to key theological concepts. The study thus illuminates the reception and role of these historical figures in the ELCD today.

Literature Counts: The Feelings of Overwhelmed

Literature Counts: The Feelings of <i>Overwhelmed</i>

The Bible on the Shakespearean Stage: Cultures of Interpretation in Reformation England ed. by Thomas Fulton and Kristen Poole

Reviewed by: The Bible on the Shakespearean Stage: Cultures of Interpretation in Reformation England ed. by Thomas Fulton and Kristen Poole Lieke Stelling (bio) The Bible on the Shakespearean Stage: Cultures of Interpretation in Reformation England Edited by Thomas Fulton and Kristen Poole Cambridge University Press, 2018. xvi + 304 pp. $99.99 hardcover. This volume marks a compelling new step in the analysis of the early modern English literary exploration of religion. The body of research on religious themes in early modern literature, and notably in Shakespeare, is vast, but, as this collection of fine essays demonstrates, far from exhaustive. If the majority of studies have concerned themselves with questions as to which parts of scripture were being alluded to in the literary culture of the Protestant Reformation, this volume considers how literary works were interested not so much in citing as in examining specific problems of interpreting the Bible, which were at the core of the Reformation. Thus, one of the threads that runs through the chapters is the deceptive understanding of literal and figurative interpretation as antithetical. In addition, the contributions discuss, through a Shakespearean lens, the wider social, theological and textual ramifications of biblical hermeneutics in relation to other important sites and forms of interpretation, including sermons and sermonizing, translation, topography and material aspects of the Bible. The first chapter, by Bruce Gordon, lays the groundwork for the volume by offering an extensive discussion of biblical production, translation, scholarship and dissemination in the age of Shakespeare. He does so by carefully tracing continental debates on and developments in approaches to translation from the languages of the Bible into Latin and vernacular tongues, and relating these issues to the production and use of Bibles in England, notably the Geneva and Bishop’s Bible. Aaron T. Pratt, remaining [End Page 210] on the topic of translation, zooms in on the question of which versions of Protestant Bibles Shakespeare and his contemporaries consumed, making the paradoxical and intriguing observation that translation is in fact less, and paratext more helpful in answering this question than is often assumed. Jay Zysk opens a new section that consists of four chapters and is dedicated to “Reformation reading practices in the theater” (49). Focusing on Measure for Measure, Zysk addresses Angelo’s mentioning of “chewing God’s name” in relation to John 6 and to the heated controversy around the issue of tran-substantiation (51). Zysk shows how the play presents the distinction between the literal and figurative reading of the Eucharist as far from clear-cut, and, more importantly, as far from trivial, but a matter of life and death. Kristen Poole, in the subsequent chapter on Hamlet, further elaborates on the issue of early modern Protestant “literalism” (71) and expounds the linguistic and theological significance of amphibology and the pun. She notes that aspects of a great deal of Hamlet’s puns bear similarities to structures of Protestant allegory in contemporary sermons. In addition, she shows that the figure of Hamlet personifies an early modern conception of the self that was shaped by the Bible in terms of its textual content as well as its material form. Beatrice Groves sheds fresh light on the moment of Henry IV’s decease in the so-called Jerusalem chamber, and his ironic observation that he always thought he would die in the Holy Land. She convincingly explains that this moment, when read in a context in which England was often typologically interpreted as the Holy Land, is closer to fulfillment than is often admitted. Tom Bishop, in the final chapter of this section, turns to the slippery concepts of “reading” (103) and “studying” (105) scripture, from the fruitful vantage point of the speech of the imprisoned Richard of Bordeaux (and former King Richard II) in Pomfret Castle. Section three, on the interplay between biblical forms and other genres, is opened by Adrian Streete’s insightful contribution about the interrelationships between classical Roman Stoic and biblical understandings of lamentation. These are brought together, Streete shows, in Shakespeare’s most gruesome play—Titus Andronicus—and inform the tensions within the identities of the tragedy’s lamenting protagonists. Hannibal Hamlin problematizes biblical allusions in Pericles (and, to a...

Astrology and Religion in the Long Reformation: “Doctor Faustus in Swadling Clouts”

ABSTRACTJohn Calvin and other religious moralists wrote against astrology in the sixteenth century, yet the astrological arts flourished over the course of the long Reformation in England. This essay confronts that paradox through an analysis of the representation of astrology, free will, and predestination in Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and in contemporary sermons, Protestant religious tracks, and polemical works for and against astrology. The essay demonstrates how astrological and theological controversial works disputed a similar Gordian knot concerning fate and free will, as they denied that the Stoic concept of fatal necessity described the apparent determinism of astrological fortune (on the one hand) and Calvinist predestination (on the other). It argues that one reason astrology and religion became strange bedfellows in the long Reformation is that they both worried similar questions concerning fate, free will, fortune, and man's moral culpability for sin.

‘Academese’, ‘church chat’ and the fear of alienating the congregation

This study is concerned with communication in religious settings, with a specific focus on the professional practice of preaching. The paper addresses concerns raised within preaching research that preaching in mainline denominations is too academic and/ or draws too heavily on theological jargon; however, little empirical evidence for this has been presented. To learn more about preachers' communicative engagement with their congregations in this regard, the study focuses on preaching vocabulary in three denominations (the Church of England, the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Catholic Church for England and Wales), using the concept of lexical environment to profile 150 contemporary sermons given in England in the UK and drawing on interviews with practising preachers. Findings indicate (1) that preaching makes only limited use of academic and potentially difficult religious vocabulary, and (2) that preaching is an inclusive, sensitive and carefully attuned lexical environment where preachers' lexical practices appear to help them achieve their discursive aims. The study furthermore shows how preachers are lexically aware and engage actively with vocabulary at various stages of sermon preparation. In addition, this study goes some way to show how applied approaches to linguistics can be of service to homiletics.

“The Huacas of the Spanish”: Expressions of Indigenous Religion in the Mythologies and Aesthetics of Colonial Andean Religious Sculpture

Early scholarship on the colonial arts of the Andes assumed that the Spanish conquest and its accompanying missionary activity resulted in a complete destruction of Inca artistic tradition, and that the indigenous conception of art and representation had little to no effect on works produced during the colonial period. Since then, scholars have recognized a tremendous amount of indigenous influence on the stylistic, iconographic and representational aspects of colonial art forms. My paper examines the influence of two aspects of indigenous culture in particular, identified by the words huaca (sacred thing) and qillca (surface decoration), which were used by the Quechua, an Andean indigenous ethnic group, to describe religious objects in the pre-Hispanic era. They were then in turn appropriated and discouraged by colonial missionaries in an attempt to make their imported Catholicism more understandable to new converts. In examining the multiple, ambiguous meanings of these words in the minds of the Quechua people and colonial missionaries as evidenced in contemporary sermons and miracle tales, I will argue that they influenced the indigenous conception of colonial religious statuary. I will then conduct a visual analysis of ‘The Virgin of Cocharcas’, an 18th century Peruvian ‘statue painting’ (two dimensional depiction of a statue) to demonstrate how concepts of huaca and qillca influenced the aesthetics of colonial statuary.

Fielding's Latitudinarian Doubt: Faith "versus" Works in Joseph Andrews

This essay challenges the assumption that Henry Fielding hated Methodism by taking an in-depth look at Fielding's treatment of Methodism in his Joseph Andrews . A comparison between Fielding's treatment of the faith versus works controversy in Joseph Andrews and coverage of the controversy in contemporary sermons, both Latitudinarian and Methodist, points out the inadequacies of language in these kinds of debates. The emerging genre of the novel, which provided a receptive ear to nuance in language, was thus an ideal vehicle for the expression of Fielding's Latitudinarian doubt. Joseph Andrews allowed Fielding the creation of Parson Adams, a fictional character whose views on Methodism and George Whitefield are not, as is generally alleged, necessarily representative of Fielding's views. In choosing to name Parson Adams after the biblical Abraham, or the Father of the Faithful, Fielding is not only questioning the parson's privileging of works and reason over faith, but also declaring his skepticism of the Latitudinarian privileging of works and reason. Perhaps Parson Adams's polemicist rant against enthusiasm is Fielding's attack on a shallow interpretation of justification by faith alone rather than a full-fledged attack upon the doctrine itself. Though it is often treated as Fielding's opportunity to be satirical, the parson's ineffectiveness, which can be seen as representative of the larger ineffectiveness of the Anglican Church, is a serious matter.

&lt;i&gt;Diana or Christ?&lt;/i&gt;: Seeing and Feeling Doubt in Late-Victorian Visual Culture

A young woman, a Christian from the third century ce, has a serious decision to make. She stands before a vast crowd at Ephesus, in what is now Turkey. Should she show her allegiance to Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, and live, or choose Christ, and be thrown to the lions? Victorian gallery-goers were entranced by this scene, an 1881 painting by the Anglo-Catholic Edwin Long, exhibited in that year at the Royal Academy, and again to widespread acclaim in the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition of 1887. The steadfast faith of its protagonist rapidly found its way into contemporary sermons, and was widely discussed in the Protestant press. One lengthy article on the painting in the evangelical journal Sunday at Home praised the ‘constancy of the Maiden Martyr’, but pondered whether nineteenth-century Christians in fact faced greater (although less obviously immediately life-threatening) challenges to maintaining their faith. It dwells, in particular, on the importance of visual signs of faith and the facial expressions of devotion — in both the third and nineteenth centuries. Commentators focused on the apparently virginal body of the young female martyr, who comes to embody — in her glowing white painted form — religious feeling, devotion through the theological (as well as art-historical and visual) valences of ‘inward light’. The religious feelings evoked by the painting were importantly gendered and racially specific. Using Diana or Christ? as a case study, this article examines how visual culture contributed to the depiction, circulation, and debate over feelings of religious doubt and certitude in late nineteenth-century Britain. It offers new understandings of Victorian historical painting, asking how immersive paintings set in the past fostered a transhistorical sense of Christian community and emotional connections across the centuries. Diana or Christ? found its way into both artistic and religious discourses in the 1880s and 1890s. This article questions what the visual, in particular, can bring to our understandings of Victorian religious feeling — but also what investigating these religious sentiments might tell us about Victorian visual culture.

La notion de prochain chez Augustin au début de son épiscopat : le rôle matriciel du sermon De dilectione Dei et proximi (Sermon Dolbeau 11)

The sermons of Augustine of Hippo play a key role in the development of Augustine’s thought. This paper attempts to show this through an example, the Sermon Dolbeau 11 (De dilectione Dei et proximi). It studies at first the links between the Sermon Dolbeau 11 and the concept of love of neighbour that emerges, and contemporary sermons in 397. Thus, the various echo effects, the same concept of caritas and the close relationship between the De dilectione and the De disciplina christiana are identified. So, these comparisons offer interesting elements to date the homiletic works of Augustine of Hippo. Secondly, we study the links between the De dilectione and the Confessiones, whether it be scriptural, thematic or notional links (the concept of proximus). This study brings us to identify a new generic category and to define the Sermon Dolbeau 11 as an ‘autobiographical sermon’. Ultimately, this paper leads us to see the homiletic works of Augustine of Hippo as a mirror of his entire work in its unity and to ...

Victorian reformations: historical fiction and religious controversy, 1820-1900

In Victorian Reformations: Historical Fiction and Religious Controversy, 1820-1900, Miriam Elizabeth Burstein analyses the ways in which Christian novelists across the denominational spectrum laid claim to popular genres-most importantly, the religious historical novel-to narrate the aftershocks of 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation. Both Protestant and Catholic popular novelists fought over the ramifications of nineteenth-century Catholic toleration for the legacy of the Reformation. But despite the vast textual range of this genre, it remains virtually unknown in literary studies. Victorian Reformations is the first book to analyse how high theological and historical debates over the Reformation's significance were popularised through the increasingly profitable venue of Victorian religious fiction. By putting religious apologists and controversialists at centre stage, Burstein insists that such fiction-frequently dismissed as overly simplistic or didactic-is essential for our understanding of Victorian popular theology, history, and historical novels. Burstein reads lost but once exceptionally popular religious novels-for example, by Elizabeth Rundle Charles, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, and Emily Sarah Holt-against the works of such now-canonical figures as Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, while also drawing on material from contemporary sermons, histories, and periodicals. Burstein demonstrates how these novels, which popularised Christian visions of change for a mass readership, call into question our assumptions about the nineteenth-century historical novel. In addition, her research and her conceptual frameworks have the potential to influence broader paradigms in Victorian studies and novel criticism.

Building a New Jerusalem: The Meaning of a Group of Merchant Houses in Seventeenth-Century Newcastle upon Tyne, England

The political and religious symbolism of buildings is of enduring interest in historical archaeology. Similarly, ideal concepts in urban planning, and utopian communities have been of recent concern. This paper moves beyond iconography and ideology to examine how a new, post-Civil War English elite tried to implement a policy of reforming their town as a New Jerusalem. A group of merchant houses reveals an attempt to build Scripture into the physical environment, and establish the elite as Elect “watchmen” over the lives and souls of the townspeople. Contemporary sermons are integral to the analysis, as are the agency and inter-relationships of a tightly-knit social group.

William Mundy's ‘Vox Patris Caelestis’ and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary

William Mundy composed the votive antiphon Vox patris caelestis during the brief English Counter-Reformation under the reign of Mary Tudor (1553–8). Unlike the majority of earlier votive antiphons, Vox patris refers to a specific liturgical and theological event, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The text is an elaborate network of tropes on the Song of Songs, interwoven with other scriptural and literary topics traditionally linked to the feast of the Assumption, and finds parallels in Conrad of Saxony's Speculum Beatae Mariae Virginis. Vox patris also reflects similar treatments of the Assumption in the Golden Legend, English mystery plays, devotional poems, and contemporary sermons. Archival evidence suggests its precise historical context. The activities of Mundy's own choir at the London church of St Mary at Hill and of other London singers, the musical observance of the Assumption during Queen Mary's reign, and the manuscript sources of Vox patris reveal the likely background for its composition and performance.

Fashioning Innocence: Rhetorical Construction of Character in the Memoirs of Anne, Lady Halkett

Writing in her mid-fifties, several years after the death of her husband, seventeenth-century autobiographer Lady Anne Halkett chose as the subject of her Memoirs a dozen years out of a life that was to span most of the century (1623-99). Her focus on the turbulent period of the Interregnum provides the text with much of its vivid interest: Halkett helps the young Duke of York (later James II) escape from London, disguised as a woman; meets the king in Edinburgh on his abortive attempt to return to power; nurses soldiers wounded in the battle that ensues; and refers in the course of her text to political schemes and secret correspondence, duels of honor and the rescue of an abducted heiress. No less dramatic than these political intrigues are her personal relationships, in part because of their entanglement in unfolding political events. After her mother's disapproval ends an early courtship with Thomas Howard, Halkett falls dangerously in love with a man who seems, by all accounts save her own, a scoundrel.1 Colonel Joseph Bampfield would eventually desert the Royalist cause, and he appears to have been equally opportunistic in his personal life, telling Halkett he was a widower when, in fact, he was not. Her attempt to determine the truth about his character is made more difficult by the chaotic state of communications during the Civil War (Rose, 271). When she discovers that Bampfield's wife is alive, Halkett reaches the nadir of her experience—her reputation has been compromised and she believes herself unable to enter any new relationship.2 This final knot is untangled with the help of Sir James Halkett, a widower himself, a sensible and sympathetic friend, and eventually, her husband. After Lady Halkett's account of their wedding, in 1656, the Memoirsend abruptly.3 No summary of its events can do justice to the Memoirs. It can only suggest the rich texture and lively intelligence which have led to the work's being singled out for praise, even when women's autobiographical [End Page 340] writing rested, for the most part, in obscurity. But even an abbreviated account of Halkett's role in these adventures confounds any naive notions that women of her time were entirely constrained by dominant cultural stereotypes. Despite the injunctions insistently repeated in contemporary sermons and conduct books, Halkett is neither silent nor obedient,4 and if she remains, in all likelihood, chaste, the events she writes about nevertheless so threaten her reputation that defense of her virtue becomes a central rhetorical motive for her writing. Indeed, I shall argue, the Memoirs are carefully and deliberately constructed to justify behavior that has left Halkett vulnerable. This much will be no surprise to her readers. What is more interesting is the form this defense takes. By appropriating the familiar conventions of the romance to her own rhetorical purposes, Halkett both entertains and wins assent to an unconventional life: she contextualizes her actions in a genre capable of accommodating the shifting uncertainties of her early years, and she constructs a reader sympathetic to the impact of this turbulence on the life of a young, single woman. As a result of Halkett's efforts to fashion an acceptable self, moreover, the Memoirs become a rich source of insight into authorizing strategies available to women writers in this period. One of the challenges posed by the Memoirs is the need to respond both to its deliberate strategizing and to its remarkable frankness, especially about the potentially scandalous matter of Halkett's relationship with Bampfield. As her modern editor notes, "If she leaves much unsaid, at least in the manuscript as it has survived, it is surprising that she wrote so much on the subject" (Loftis, ix). In a narrative where identities are masked and deception figures prominently—in the depiction of...

THE EROSION OF OATH-BASED RELATIONSHIPS: A CULTURAL CONTEXT FOR "ATHELSTON"

Scholars seeking to relate the Middle English Athelston to its historical contexts have worked primarily to identify historical prototypes for the tale's major characters, especially its rash, violent, and easily led king. Unfortunately, such a profile leaves open all too wide a field of medieval monarchs, and no consensus has been reached.1 This essay approaches the relationship between history and an anonymous romance from another direction: it examines the historical basis for the tale's urgency, the reasons for its representation of a world beset by personal anxiety and national crisis. In simple binary terms, Athelston dramatizes a long, slow, and highly complex cultural shift that took place in England over the course of the Middle Ages, the gradual transition from a social system based on personal, oath-based relationships to a centralized bureaucracy reliant upon documentary records.2 Although the tale's stark polarizations simplify a complex process, the anonymous author conveys with clarity and emotional force his perspective on a highly significant cultural change.While many Middle English romances introduce themselves as tales of a particular hero, this strange and angry narrative, untitled in its unique manuscript version, announces itself as a tale of 'falsnesse' (line 8).3 Four men with no blood relationship - 'Þat sybbe were nou3t off kyn' (line 12) - and no common place of origin - 'Ylke man was of dyuers cuntre' (line 20) - share the same occupation: 'alle foure messangeres þey were, / Þat wolden yn Yngelond lettrys bere' (lines 13f.). Like many characters in medieval narrative, including the 'sondry folk, by aventure yfalle / In felaweshipe' (I.25f.) in the opening lines of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,4 the four messengers take pleasure in their fortuitous meeting and quickly decide to enter into an oath-based relationship. As we shall see, the poet considers such relationships essential to social life,5 but represents them as deeply endangered by the erosion of trouthe, the personal fidelity to one's oaths and pledges that alone makes such affiliations possible.Just as the Canterbury pilgrims Othes swore / With ful glad herte' to form a voluntary association where no bond previously existed (I.810f.), so the four messengers in Athelston spontaneously bind themselves:The idea of strangers joyfully forming ad hoc, voluntary, oath-based associations had a strong pull on the imaginations of Ricardian writers; another memorable example is the 'covenant' sworn between Gawain and his apparently newly met host to initiate their exchange of winnings, again accompanied by laughter, joy, and, as in The Canterbury Tales (I.819f.), a bargain-sealing drink.6 In narratives of the later fourteenth century, including both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Canterbury Tales, these oath-based associations, so gaily entered into, can be subjected to considerable strain. In Athelston, the strain is especially severe: out of secret malice, one of the swearers immediately betrays his oath, and the consequences are calamitous, not just for the four sworn brothers, but for the whole nation.The perception that falsnesse posed a threat to the foundations of social life was widespread in late fourteenth-century England. In a well-known passage, Chaucer has the lordly Arveragus of his Franklin's Tale assert that 'Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe' (V.1479), but one of the insurrectionist letters attributed to the radical priest John Ball had recently proclaimed it too late to 'kepe' a lost ideal: 'trewpe hat bene sette under a lokke, / And fal[s]nes regneth ...' Contemporary sermons quote verses that spread the same bad news: 'falsenes, I vnderstande, / haues clreuen trwvte of lande.'7 Widespread feelings of disillusionment and betrayal are hardly unique to this period, but the prevalence of this perception at this historical moment is especially interesting because trouthe in its traditional meaning was indeed being driven out of the land, if not by falsnesse, then by a semantic change with wide-ranging cultural implications. …

“Waves of weary wretchednesse”: Florimell and the Sea

Contemporary sermons provide not only parallels for the setting of Florime’s adventures but a key to their moral meaning. Florimell’s shift from land to sea at a critical moment in her quest alerte...

:The Isenheim Altarpiece. God's Medicine and the Painter's Vision

Andree Hayum approaches Matthias Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece, now at the Musee d'Unterlinden in Colmar, as a structural and iconographic entity and restores it to its broader cultural context in the early sixteenth century. She interprets the altarpiece in terms of its hospital context, then explores how this polyptych functions as a system of communication, in relation to contemporary sermons and in response to an emerging print culture. The meaning and motivation behind the direct visual appeal of the Isenheim panels are considered within the liturgy and the sacramental economy.